Removing Mascots is an Insult to Native American People and Disrespectful of History

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Montvale NJ,nothing like not knowing anything about your local history , the Pascack Valley Regional High School District Board of Education meeting on June 22, the Board voted to remove the “Cowboy” and “Indian” as the Pascack Hills and Pascack Valley High Schools’ respective mascots.

According to the Archaeological Institute of America, in September of 2019 researchers from Harvard University and Montclair State University, in partnership with the Ramapough Lunaape Nation, uncovered worked conch shells on private property in northeastern New Jersey. Conch shells were used to make wampum, and arrived in New Jersey as ballast on ships from the Caribbean. Historic records suggest the home where the shells were discovered was once owned by people who worked at the Campbell Wampum Mill, which was located about two miles away. The Campbell Wampum Mill used machines to mass produce shell beads and hair pipes, which were won by Native Americans at important ceremonies, as late as 1890. Earlier archaeological investigations in the region failed to find any evidence of wampum-making. “This is the smoking gun archaeological signature we have been searching for all summer,” said Eric Johnson of Harvard University. Finished wampum was sold to New York merchants, who traded with Native Americans. Evidence of a workshop was uncovered at the site of the residence, based on the large quantities of shell pieces recovered.

Native Americans played a significant role in the development of Bergen County often referred to as the Lenni-Lenape. The Lenni-Lenape (“original men”), a Native American tribe. The name is a Dutch derivation of the Lenape word for what is now the region of northeastern New Jersey along the Hudson and Hackensack rivers. While the Lenape people occupied much of the mid-Atlantic area, Europeans referred to small groups of native people by the names associated with the places where they lived.

“The term Lenni Lenape can be a convenient ethnographic tag encompassing independent communities, sharing a common ancestry and speaking dialects of the same Algonquian language, who inhabited the territory lying between the head of tides on the Hudson River and the head of Chesapeake Bay from the Susquehanna River eastward to the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson Valley. It should not imply, however, that individual Lenape identfied themselves with (or gave allegiance to) any cohesive social unit larger than their own family or community of close relations. However, evidence does suggest that some independent, neighboring communities bonded together in loose family alliances or regional groupings, generally distinguished by a common dialect.” ( https://www.bergencountyhistory.org/nativeamericans-in-bergen-county )